Spring on the Land

The land in question is only a seventy five by fifty foot lot in the low lands of Pacific Beach. Somehow, this land came to be mine in the eyes of the law in 2004 despite my lack of belief in owning the earth, but a person has got to live somewhere and while I can live anywhere I can fit a sleeping bag, a bike, a surfboard and a laptop computer, my wheelchair dependent mother likes a bit more in the way of creature comforts - things like indoor showers, heat and a television with fifty seven channels.

So we settled here for the rest of her life.

After the fuss of remodeling to make the bathroom and kitchen more accessible for wheelchairs, I started thinking about the land. Not that there's much. The back yard was a postage stamp of concrete and the front yard two small blocks of soil topped with bark and a couple of recently planted palm trees.

That first summer, I would sit on out on the front concrete slab in the evening and look at the bark and try to decided what to do. After a while, the land started talking to me. It wanted to be the way it was before the Americans, before the Californianos, before the Mexicans, before the Spanish Conquistadors. The land wanted to live like it lived when the footsteps of the Kumeyaay Nation and the hoof beats of Pronghorn antelope roamed the sandy banks of Rose Creek and the Great Blue Herons waded through the marshes and the American Wigeons wintered here and took flight in huge flocks that blocked the sun.

My nephew (who was eight when we moved in) and I discussed the possibility of keeping an antelope in the yard. He didn't think it was practical to have antelope in Pacific Beach, but I could keep cantaloupe instead. I have yet to take him up on his suggestion.

So I read books, listened to the wind, talked to the wealth of knowledgeable people in the area on what plants would have lived in my yard in the year one thousand five hundred. And then I planted. Dug, chopped, hauled rocks, tried to create a balance of plants to bring happiness to the land and the people living on it now. This spring the land thanks me. A carpet of bright orange California poppies, bunches of bright yellow Coast Sunflower and clumps of butter cream Beach Evening Primrose fill in the gaps. Even a purple Wild Hyacinth lurks in the corner of the yard sprung from the soil as if slumbering for generations.

Black Sage and San Diego Sagewort rub up against me as I pass and envelope me in the smell of San Diego. Even the Scrub Oak is growing, tiny tender shoots stretching up towards the sky. This is where we live, along the once upon a time shore of Rose Creek in the land of sage and the ghosts of antelope and Kumeyaay basket weavers.

To all the ancestors and the Grizzly Bears who fished the shores of the bay - spring blessings, we are listening to the words in the wind. Peace to all my relations.